Blades iPhone Xs Trailer Shows Off Console Quality Visuals

At the iPhone Xs and Xs Max event, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard took to the stage to show off The Elder Scrolls: Blades. The latest entry in the long-running Elder Scrolls franchise, Blades will utilise the processing capabilities to deliver console quality visuals for greater immersion Howard said. A live gameplay trailer showed off a host of varied areas ranging from dark corridors to wide, open sunlit areas. Thanks to the iPhone Xs’ OLED display, details that would usually go amiss are now brought to light such as surface textures like rocky caverns or snowy ground. Plus, lighting is enhanced as well with reflections bouncing off your character’s weapons. Howard also stated that audio gets a boost as well thanks to the iPhone Xs’ speakers.

The Elder Scrolls: Blades trailer also featured full scale processing, new depth of field effects, and is running 40 percent faster than it does on previous generation iOS devices. It ended with a tease of a dragon fight, harkening back to the most popular game in The Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim.

However, The Elder Scrolls: Blades doesn’t have a release date yet. All Howard mentioned was that it will be available this Fall. The Elder Scrolls: Blades is played from a first-person perspective and has been specifically designed for mobile with touch controls and support for both landscape or portrait mode. Blades will release first on Android and iOS this year, and on consoles, PC, and VR sometime in the future.

This isn’t Bethesda’s first stab of trying to bring the Elder Scrolls series to mobile platforms. After all, it did bring Skyrim to the Nintendo Switch and prior to that its very first attempt at handheld gaming was an Elder Scrolls PSP game called The Elder Scrolls Travels: Oblivion which was canceled midway in development.